Category: german language

The German Alphabet

The German alphabet is more or less like the English one. We have just got four more letters. One problem you might encounter though is the different pronunciation of German letters. Some letters or two letter combinations in German even have several sounds. Continue reading “The German Alphabet”→

Les Allemands, the Germans, i Tedeschi

Guest post by Kerstin Cable of fluentlanguage from the 10th of August 2015

There is a reason the Germans and Germany go by different names in different languages. When you travel to our country, you’re always travelling to a specific region too.

When you want to learn German, what does that historic heritage mean for you?

The German you are learning in online classes and textbooks is our standard dialect called Hochdeutsch and will help you understand the language anywhere. But did anyone mention the 26 dialects? Beyond distinct identities, our different regions also speak different dialects. Some vary so strongly from German that it becomes almost impossible to make out what we are saying even for other native Germans.

Once you get down to speak to a native speaker, perhaps in conversation training or in lessons, you’ll quickly realize that they do things a little differently. A rolled R or a curious idiom are all parts of the many German dialects. To find out where exactly you are, you don’t even need to ask your conversation partner. Their language alone is going to give it away.

In this article, let me introduce you to some of the most remarkable signs of German dialects.

1. How did your friend greet you?

In order to discover if your conversation partner is going to be using a strong dialect at all, take their greeting as a clue. Young people often greet with “hi!” and very formal environments ask for a “Guten Tag”, but beyond that the local colours come out to play.

The area around Hanover is famous for employing the clearest German in Germany and regarded by many other native speakers as accent-free. Going further South, the regional varieties become stronger and stronger, but Eastern Germany and Friesland also hold their own.

As a rule of thumb, the more rural your environment, the more obvious the speaker’s local dialect will be. Look out for the following ways of saying hello from the different regions:

Moin in Hamburg

Un?in the Mosel Valley

(G’n) Tach in the Rhineland

Servus in Bavaria

Grüß dich in various Southern regions and Grüezi in Switzerland

“…..” in Berlin (they have a reputation for not greeting at all!)

2. Listen to the R

German dialects run through the whole range of what a speaker can do with the R. The North gives it a gentle roll, such as when a Hamburger speaks of the steife Brise. The middle doesn’t really do much and reverts to the “French R”, a gentle sound created at the back of the mouth. And finally there’s the South: Bavaria, Austria…that’s the rolled R as you know it from the movies.

So if you want to produce an authentic German R, don’t worry about rolling or not rolling. Just don’t round your lips like you do in English and you’ll be on your way.

3. What’s for lunch?

The regions don’t just vary in language and landscape, but also feature their very own interpretations of German cuisine. Traditionally, Germans eat a warm lunch as their main meal of the day. But at any time of the day you can find something very regional. This map from zeit.de shows what’s for lunch where.

So next time you’re on a trip to the German restaurant, can you spot the authentic food beyond Schnitzel and Bratwurst?

4. A drink to go with that

Here’s a shocker: Germany may have a reputation as one of the true places of beer love, but not all Germans are beer drinkers. In fact, I think there’s something we love doing more than anything else when it comes to fizzy drinks. No matter if they’re alcoholic or not, your German, Austrian and Swiss friends will mix them together with gusto. This leads to fantastical creations like the filling Bananenweizen (wheat beer with banana juice) and refreshing Berliner Weiße (beer with raspberry syrup).

So if you want your German friends to reveal where they grew up, it takes nothing more than a trip to the nearest pub. Drink words are another giveaway to show you where someone is from.

If all that language has your head spinning, it’s simple to return to “normality”: Just switch on the evening news for a friendly “Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren.”

And if you’re excited about learning German, I would love to invite you to join the VIP list for my new German course.

The list includes a completely free email series, guiding you through the most important points that you need to know so you can lose your accent, speak German with confidence and master every sound.

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Kerstin is a native German speaker and has lived in the UK since 2003. She’s passionate about languages and has studied 7 languages. Kerstin is the lady behind the popular Fluent Language blog and has created Speak German like a Nativefor German learners, a course that focuses on helping learners develop better pronunciation and accent in German.

Also try out her free 7-day email series to boost your pronunciation skills at fluentlanguage.

Don’t Worry about Denglish or Anglicisms

I was asked, what I though about denglish and the anglification of the German language. Here are my thoughts on these topics:

Language is a living thing and is constantly (!) developing. Trying to control and regulate it is doomed to fail. All we can do is to analyze it and to try to understand it so that we can teach it to a certain degree. Trying to “protect” a language from new words is simply impossible, no matter how many regulatory boards you invoke. It also is a sign of fear of change and therefore of life. In my 40 years of existence I can guarantee you that life means constant change whether we like it or not. And I base that notion not only on my own experience. Just ask around and try to find someone who hasn’t changed since he or she was born. Let’s observe. No one is forced to use a certain word if he doesn’t like it. And no one ever should be. To forbid words or whole languages is a tool of dictatorships and therefore oppression. And I am so not a friend of these.

Denglish in Advertisements

Adverts are used to raise attention and address a specific crowd. I don’t see a problem here. Re-naming an “Information” at the Bahnhof into a “Service Point” could cause trouble to those who really don’t speak any English (while “Information” would be easily understood by English-speaking travellers) and therefore might not have been a wise choice. But also here, feedback is everything. If the Deutsche Bahn realises that there are less information-requests since the change, they might rename it again. If not, well… we are stuck with “Information Point”. While that is not the Denglish it is related and also in the eye of those who claim to want to “protect” the German language.

Babel reverted – The Future of Languages

One more thing that comes to my mind: the fact that languages are constantly being developed – which is a nicer term for Denglish – is a sign of evolution. It is extremely inefficient to keep 250 different languages up (not counting in the endless number of dialects). Just consider the costs for all the translations we need to communicate internationally. All the literature that is lost to billions of people, all the knowledge and wisdom. Consider the costs of mistakes in business due to cultural misunderstandings, which very often are strongly related to language issues. If we are going to make it on this planet (or others) together we will have to speak and write (more or less) the same language one day, whatever that language will be called by then. I will not live long enough to witness this, neither will you, but this is the future of any (!) language despite all resistance. And I wouldn’t worry about the loss of diversity. I’m certain those who come after us will find a way to distinguish themselves sufficiently or just be fine with being all the same. I can’t see that far into the future with my crystal ball and it is “müßig” to think about it at this place.

I get many comments on youtube of which all (non-troll) are just amazingly soothing. I would ilke to share them with you in this form. I went back approximately six month. Every feedback motivates me to improve my teaching and to create more material. So, keep it coming.

Thanks to all who have commented and who study or have studied with my videos. Without you my work would not be of any use. Ganz herzlichen Dank.

Endlich (At last)! Funny Germans tricking us into believing that, even if German is a bit trickier than it ought to be, we can crack it. And it seems to work – I’m a believer. I am just wondering whether the tango that plays under the closing credits (‘Pasional’) was chosen entirely at random, or from a deep German sense of irony? This is what the lyrics have to say to us, the German learning viewers: “… lo que es morir mil veces de ansiedad” – “… what it is to die a thousand times of anxiety” 😉

thank you so much for this, it helped a lot, other rules were hard to grasp, you cannot always think of everything when a word comes up while speaking, but these three mantras are amazing, very practical 🙂

Hahaha I was looking for this song to remember it from class. Poor girl is so embarrassed, it’s so funny to watch hahahah. Good job, this is a better version than what I learned in class 🙂 more videos with the cute shy girl!

Hello again. and what finely crafted wisdom do I impart today , this time on B1? None….just the usual, thanks for clear explanations, insights into the grammar which I have yet to deal with in depth and the pleasant videos. 15 mins , the lot.

great work and much [more] success. your mnemonic tips even in one video point the right way to go… I have been struggling with a Linguaphone “complete”course” for YEARS , 4 books , 15 cassettes… still explaining the case / article system half way through in a most laborious manner with not ONE single mnemonic. I did memorisation work however of the article/ case charts and finally it is paying off GRAMMATICALLY but not when it comes to speaking it , even now! No wonder people give up…utmost perseverance with that course.

Really, thank you for the beautiful advice. I was desperate from the German language, but when I saw you and your videos, especially the second and third lesson, made me feel hopeful. Thank you ..you are amazing :-)..

I’ve just discovered your channel. I am so happy that I find finally what I need. I start to learn German because I will be in Cologne next March with ERASMUS programme. I need to start from the first step. Thank you for this awasome videos. You are great 🙂

Hello, I just found your channel right now and I enjoyed watching your video ,you are doing great job , I have b1 test next month and can you please tell some advices .. I live In Austria Tirol ..and do you do on line course in skype for example and how its working ,, Many thanks , Rami

Great, innovative techniques, as always! Congratulations to you and to Maggie Jabczynski! By the way, I still owe you a complete review on your recent effort “Greek in 30 Days”. I still haven’t managed to see the whole series, but I hope I will do that soon. Bis bald, Michael!

Are you going to be doing another one of these series? I really enjoyed watching the progress of Ewelina over the 14 days. I believe I remember you saying that you like to do another one of these series (if people were interested). I would love to be a part of that next project!

As someone who’s new to learning the language (by myself), I feel self-conscious (and might, at times, over-think) about how long/short my vowels are and if they’re long/short enough, so I appreciate your attention to that greatly. Thanks for sharing with us! 🙂

My beliefs are exactly the same. I was smitten too when I started learning German. Thoughts about how much there is to learn and where to begin from and how I am going to go about it made me so tired that I was feeling very lost. Your approach is also exactly the approach I was looking for too.

This is an updated version of my Article about Duolingo & Co. in a much gentler tone than the original article and a few modified insights.

Inspired by a few commenters, I would like to clarify a few things beforehand.

I do not offer a product or service similar to Duolingo or any other language learning platform. My videos solely focus on German grammar and my tuition costs 4.000€ or more. My videos are rather a supplement (!) to any other German course or software out there and it is highly unlikely that a Duolingo user switches to my private tuition. I personally don’t have any benefit nor do I take pleasure from criticizing other people’s hard work. Everybody is free to evaluate my material under the same standards and I welcome any constructive criticism as it helps to improve my material and my work. And I hope that is also the attitude of other producers.

Therefore it should also be clear that I do not compare my products or services to those mentioned in the article.

As for the intention to raise attention, sure, I would love you to check out my material, yet I sincerely figure that those programs and platforms that I discuss here do have significant flaws that you should be very aware of. But it is still up to you to use whatever program you like. After having read this article you can make a more educated decision.

All my claims follow solid reasoning. Should you have a better and proven argument or find a mistake in mine, I have no problem, updating it, as that is what improves my work. So far I unfortunately have not come across better arguments than mine.

Language Learning Softwares like Duolingo claim to help you learn German

While in the following I will refer to Duolingo, much of the criticism applies to any other language learning software out there. They are called Busuu, Babbel, Rosetta Stone, Tell Me More, Talk to Me, BliuBliu, Rocket Languages’ German just to name the most known language learning programs respectively language learning platforms. I will simply call them „Duolingos“ as that sounds the catchiest but they all suffer from the same problems. Just let me make one thing very clear at the beginning: The idea and the efforts behind Duolingo and it’s competitors is remarkable and absolute worth being further developed and acknowledged. Watch this entertaining and impressive TED-talk by Duolingo’s CEO Luis von Ahn to find out what it actually is all about.

The following article also wants to show that even in 2015 it is still a challenge to learn languages online or via software.

In my opinion you shouldn’t use any of the above softwares exclusively if you are serious about learning proper German in the shortest time possible. Some of them might prove as worthwhile add-ons to your regular learning as they seem to push ones motivation. Also if you don’t have access to any better resource or simply can’t afford standard tuition, then yes, you might want to play around with those.

In the following I would just like to raise your attention regarding relevant flaws so that you are aware of them and can find workarounds for them.

What am I Exercising Exactly?

Duolingo is a nicely programmed and optically well designed platform to learn a few languages. I am mostly concerned about German so I took a closer look this weekend and here is what I found:

I wonder what this exercise is about. There is nothing achieved by performing this task as you could still successfully solve this task even if you wrote anything in Marsian below the photos. You will come across such introductions every once in a while and they are pretty common among such programs. Rosetta Stone e.g. uses four pictures with solely the German term written below each photo so you associate the German word directly with the image. I can find some sense in that although it still lacks depth. But more about that later.

This is also a good example for the shallowness of many of the exercises that I have found in Duolingo & Co. Often there are only three options given as a possible answer. Which then can simply be guessed. A 33% chance is far to high to let anyone be certain about his achievements. They also don’t require any thinking but are mere acts of visual recognition. And that’s one of the easiest task to perform for your mind as it is a recognizing machine. You can recognize a man or a woman (or many other things and beings) from pretty far away solely by certain clues that you have been trained in or were born to see. Recognizing visual clues is necessary to understand but it is a very weak form of learning. After all you want to be able to understand and use language and not only recognize it visually, right?

Lost in Translation

There are much more challenging exercises in Duolingo that make up for this a bit. But one still has to remain attentive. Take a look at this screenshot here:

Again, the execution of the exercises is lovely. I especially like the ‚almost correct‘ and that they take it easy on the capitalization in the beginning while mentioning it. But as soon as there is more than one kind of mistake, Duolingo goes down on its knees. Do you see the ‚is‘ in the German translation? This even more serious mistake is overlooked by the machine and can as easily be overlooked by the man or woman in front of the screen even though the correct transcription is given in the green field.

Randomness Kills Interest

Another issue I see is that these translations are random. There is very little context as the sentence you have to translate are ripped out of their context. While that is still better than learning isolated words, our brain prefers greater context. Not for nothing do we love good stories and we wouldn’t read a bunch of isolated sentences to our children at bedtime.

Although Duolingo mentions the grammar, it doesn’t get clear in the exercise itself. But more about German grammar later.

If you provide information in its greater context, you don’t have to motivate the learner by adding fancy jingles or highscores. The motivation will come from understanding something intelligent in a foreign language.

To give you an impression of what I am talking about here a few examples. The following sentences were taken from consecutive exercises:

• My friend creates webpages. >> That’s why we have a blue sky. >> I speak with my friend at the computer. >> I wasn’t hungry.

Those are just random sentences even though the CEO claimed in his very interesting TED-talk that the examples in Duolingo would be ‚real content‘. He can only have meant those later exercises in which pretty advanced learners are confronted with translating real life articles into the chosen language. But until you get there you will have spent plenty of hours with the kind of information mentioned above.

Reden ist Silber…

All in all Duolingo offers all necessary kinds of exercises. There’s reading, writing, listening and even speaking. But the latter still seems to be in its beta phase as I wasn’t able to get the computer to understand what I was saying (just to remind you: I am a native German testing their German learning program) nor was I able to replay what was obviously recorded. I tried it on a fully functional 2011 Macbook Air with the newest OS, so that might be a specific issue with my machine. But I also tried it on a new iPad Air where it understood my speaking but I also could have said just anything and it would have been accepted as correct. So, when I was asked to repeat: ‚Ja‘ I would say ‚Nein‘ and get away with it, meaning the machine accepted it as ‚correct‘. I tried that several times with the same results.

And simply getting one’s utterances through the voice-recognition is not yet proof of correct speech as they usually have a quite high level of tolerance. Rosetta Stone (RS) and Rocket Languages (RL) seem to be exceptions. They also show the sound waves and compare yours to the original ones. That would be pretty neat feedback if it worked. I’m not sure anymore regarding the precision of that feature in RS but in RL it simply seems useless to me. Take a look at this screenshot of my try to pronounce a German sentence to understand my harsh conclusion:

The problem in Rosetta Stone as well as in Rocket Languages and Duolingo is that one just has to repeat what was spoken by the computer a few seconds ago. That’s not really a substitute for a conversation partner as you are not really using the language but merely copying what you hear. But this could be used to train your listening comprehension and auditive memory. It would be nice though if you had the possibility to deactivate the writing. But of course you can always close your eyes. Another issue I have with this feature is that you don’t really get corrected (except visually by being shown the sound waves in RS or RL). It seems that no software is capable yet of correcting your pronunciation or sentence melody and that’s often crucial to be understood properly.

It would suffice for now to have the option to be able to record your speech and then have the opportunity to play that back right after the original sentence so that you can compare your speaking to the original. I’m not certain whether RS is not offering such a function at this time (04/2015) and will take another look. RL offers this function and uses dialogues as context. That’s a huge plus.

Listen Well

I am a big fan of dictations. Duolingo offers mini-dictations that also give the learner the opportunity to slow the pace of the spoken sentence. But they have chosen to let a computer read the sentences that you are about to type. And while quite often that sounds surprisingly good, individual words are often mispronounced and deprived of their natural melody. Just one sample. Try to understand first before you read the transcription at the end of this article.

Discuss with the Right People

Democracy is surely a nice concept but I am not a big fan of it, when it comes German teaching. We have a saying in German: „Zu viele Köche verderben den Brei“, meaning „Too many cooks spoil the broth“. In Duolingo you often have the opportunity to discuss the translation of a sentence or even a single word. If you click on ‚discuss sentence‘ you can find users that ask questions or help others with their answers. You can rate each answer by voting it up or down. So far so good. This is a great idea for upper intermediate or advanced learners but for beginners I find that too confusing. It might be too overwhelming and you can not really be sure about the quality of an answer as you don’t know who has given it. Even the best German learner might have a few blind spots here and there that they then transmit to others. This leads me to my dearest point: the lack of grammar explanations and learning aids.

Grammar: The Ugly Stepchild

This is not the place to discuss the necessity and usefulness of solid knowledge about German grammar. You might find my point of view in many of my other articles on my blog here. While browsing through my learning tree I found some grammatical explanations in Duolingo but wasn’t be able to find them again once I was done with a certain chapter. There were also not too many of them.

Duolingo introduces tiny bits of German grammar in little speech bubbles as you can see in the second screenshot ‚all nouns are capitalized‘ which is a very nice idea but I can nowhere search for grammatical explanations except in the Discussion-forums. Luckily those have a search function which on the other hand requires me to know the grammatical term for what I’m looking for.

No Instruction on how to Learn German

I haven’t come across any instruction on how to learn things quicker or with less effort except in the main forum. And the advice that I had found was not really precise. The German language is often perceived as a difficult language but I honestly think that it is completely unnecessary as the basics are very quickly understood if explained the right way.

Another problem is that very often we make use of what we already know when learning a new language. That means we apply those techniques that we have acquired in school. Unless you had an outstanding German or other language teacher, your techniques are most likely self-tought and might be far from efficient. They probably did the job but you might already know how little is required to „just to the job“, right?

How to (not) proof Efficiency

I understand that Duolingo heavily relies on a numerous user base and the money of VCs. Providing both interest groups with an official study that ‚proves‘ that the program is helping people to learn languages is surely beneficial for this purpose.

Yet, when it comes to numbers I am always skeptical. Although I have thorouhgly read through the description of the study, I am left with quit a few significant questions:

If ~100 out of ~200 participants bailed out of the study, doesn’t that also say something about the quality of Duolingo or simply about the clientele that believes to be able to learn a language with its help?

Which elements of Duolingo are actually relevant for the found results and

how are they relevant for the progress that was measured?

What does the result actually say? I mean, what do I do with the information that „after working 34 hours in average with Duolingo the average of participants showed progress that is comparable of one semester in a language course at any college“?

How many hours of language instruction does a college student get?

How im portant are those classes for his or her success at the college?

Where do I find the control study/group that was instructed to work the same amount of time with their own or even without any (if such a thing is possible) method or help?

Isn’t the goal of most language learners to be able to speak that language? Why wasn’t the oral skill tested as well?

There were many other questions that came up while working it through but without the above questions answered any conclusion drawn from that study is merely worthless. And I apologize for being a bit harsh here but if you claim to have scientific proof, better make sure it is scientific. This study is far from it.

Conclusion

I am sorry to have taken apart such a good idea and also technically well executed product (with the exception of the audio/speaking part on my machines). But it is not Duolingo alone that doesn’t hold up to its claim to teach us the German language. All other softwares are also suffering from the same basic flaws: under- or overchallenging exercises, lack of greater context and lack of instruction (i.e. German grammar and language learning techniques). These programs are made for millions of learners and using software to individualize and optimize the language learning process is certainly the right approach. But until today the programs that I have discussed in this article are far from being more beneficial than a solidly thought through self-learner book like e.g. those from Assimil (German with Ease). I find them harmful in the sense that they take away valuable time and in my evaluation prolong the learning process unnecessarily. They also approach German learning in a very unnatural way, mainly monolingual teaching, isolated exercises often far from reality, no specific vocabulary training, bad speaking training.

I simply would like to make German learners aware of the fact that they could do much better if they hired a professional private tutor. I understand that flexibility, a great UX (DL) and low cost are factors that are tempting and might let one overlook the problems that I have mentioned. And as my last article seemed a bit hostile towards these softwares, let me assure you that I am the first to adapt good language learning software for my clients as soon as it exists. So far I am working with memrise and yabla.com. I also recommend learners to get their writing corrected at lang-8.com. Those are excellent pieces of work that solve a very concrete problem efficiently. But the software that solves all problems is yet possibly ten years away.

I have no problem with you using any of the programs that I have mentioned in this article. After all it is your lifetime and you are free to waste it on whatever you like. I wouldn’t use them at this point in time and that is my very personal conclusion that I have given you a few solid reasons for.

If you are looking for a well-designed German language course for self-learners, I can recommend the Assimil-German with Ease series with audio. The dialogues are boring though yet the concept is efficient and offline.

Should you like any of the Duolingos, that’s totally fine with me. I see no need to criticize or discuss your personal experience or preferences. Maybe I have been able to make you aware of a few traps on your path to learn German and you can now enjoy it even more.

Typical mistakes of German learners

Someone recently asked, what are common typical mistakes German learners make. Here is my analysis of the last 20 years of dealing with all kinds of language learning and learners:

Setting realistic goals: Many German learners simply don’t set SMART goals, nor do they plan their learning properly or at all.

Underestimating the necessary effort necessary to be able to use the language freely and effortlessly. These learners begin to struggle and suffer as soon as their expectations are not met (and that’s very often pretty soon).

Learning the language for the wrong reasons: Learning a language because you hope (!) that one day you will find a better – i.e. better paying – job is like buying 50 packages of butter because you might get a 10% discount. While it certainly is true that learning a language might (also) yield such benefits, that path is an extremely cumbersome one.

Using inefficient tools: As a layperson it’s almost impossible to judge right away what works well and what doesn’t. There is an abundance of online-learning tools and even a bigger abundance of “experts” who recommend them even without financial but the more psychological benefit. Sure, those tools do something to your language learning, or better: they at least do not hinder your learning significantly at best. Our brains are learning machines and it is hard NOT TO LEARN something. We often associate random events with our successes and failures. You might know this phenomenon as “superstition”. And when it comes to language learning superstition is widespread. A bad advice is a bad advice, even if well-meant. Better than nothing doesn’t necessarily mean good. With the right tools you could save a lot of time and later frustration. Memrise is such a lovely tool for German learners. Another is Meister der Konjugation. Other than that you need a text book, a dictionary and a source for grammar (more formal approach or easier to understand), et voilá: you are set up at least regarding all necessary tools.

Using language learning techniques from school: Not many of us learn any significant language learning technique in school or university. We usually stick to those techniques that we have “invented” ourselves and that did the job. But doing the job is not the same as being efficient. Learning a new technique or following an approach that differs from what we know raises suspicion and causes discomfort. Yet, just like with almost anything else (except with eating icecream) all beginning is difficult. We can compare this phenomenon with learning how to type. You can certainly go through life (and university or both) by typing your way through with two fingers. But it makes the hell of a difference to be able to use all ten blindly.

Saving money at the wrong point: 1h with a professional private tutor might be worth the same as 10hrs in a group stuffed with random language learners. No amount of money can substitute quality of teaching. From a learning point of view what matters is the teacher and the group that you are learning with. So whether you spend 1.200€ / month at the Goethe Institut or 250€ / month at the Hartnackschule, what you get from it is not mainly determined by the price. What makes a good teacher you can look up here.

Believing in miracles: Yes, it’s possible to reach B1 in many languages from scratch in 14 days as I have proven but mainly for the pretty gifted and with a specialist at hand. 99% of learners will simply need more time than that, especially (!) when on their own. Estimate one year of constant (!) effort (3hrs/day) if not two years.

Overestimating oneself: That is not meant in any arrogant way. Learning a language just somehow without worrying too much about mistakes or pronunciation is simple and quickly accomplished even on one’s own. But learning a language properly on one’s own is a very strenuous and delicate undertaking. From my experience it’s rather a minority who is good at this and/or enjoys this. Of course this is just my subjective observation and feel free to prove me wrong as that would mean that you have achieved something really great. I couldn’t want more to be wrong in any other area of my life.

Last but not least: I wouldn’t mark “being afraid of making mistakes” as a mistake as this actually is nothing that you can consciously influence and is rather part of your psychological set up. If you are too afraid of communicating with others you might simply want to focus your language learning efforts on the other skills. Yet, I personally am a strong proponent of psychotherapy for overcoming inhibitions that hold us back to become who we truly are. That can make an immense difference for your ability to acquire a foreign language. But that’s stuff for another post one day.

So these are my two cents to the question of typical mistakes German learners make. Maybe you find yourself in some of the points above. I certainly have made all (!) of the above mentioned mistakes myself in the past and have paid with invaluable lifetime and suffered more frustration than I should have. Luckily I didn’t mess up my languages. But I’m highly analytical which is a huge benefit when learning languages. Yet, I have met many who have to walk around with broken German or English for the rest of their lifes (!) and I feel with them as that is hard to fix. Be wiser than me and try to avoid the above mentioned mistakes and you will experience your German learning as a wonderful journey with many surprises on its way.

How to sound like a real German – Hendiadis learned by heart

German hendiadis are combination of words that usually mean the same or at least something similar combined with „und“. This emphasizes the words’ meanings. The following hendiadis are very common and will upgrade your German significantly and make you sound like a real German. Don’t bother to figure out each word’s individual meaning as the differences are not only subtle but also will not be helpful for understanding their use in the hendiadi. Learn them by heart, where possible with help of the linkword technique and of course with help of memrise. You can find the most common hendiadi and some other interesting constructions in a ready made memrise course here.

When I find the time I answer questions on different forums. Someone asked today what are the most important (grammar?) rules for a beginner German learner. I had the idea of such a post in my head for a long time so I took the opportunity to finally write it down. Here are my top 10 “rules” for anyone who would like to learn German efficiently. I hope it helps you on your path. Take care and viel Erfolg with your German.

To ask for things politely or express your desires also called wishes you will need the Konjunktiv II which is very (!) simple: use a form of “würden” (=would) + Infinitive. One example: Ich würde gerne einen Kaffee bestellen. (=I would “like” a coffee to order) The forms of “würden” are: ich würde, du würdest, es würde, wir würden, ihr würdet, sie würden. Done. Next.

Get a book and start reading it. Here’s the book that I have already prepared the vocab for at memrise. Any other book will do, too, yet you’d have to enter the new vocab into your own memrise course yourself. Do not exceed 25-30 words per level if you intend to do so.

Know what’s expected of you and check out these freely available model exams (there’s also videos showing you samples of an oral exam of each level): Goethe-Zertifikat B1 (other levels you will find in the left sidebar of that page).

Enjoy what you are doing, that mainly means that you should connect German to the things you love to do most as then it will not feel like work. It’ll still be an awful lot of work, but it won’t feel like it.I know the last four points are not actually grammar rules but they are rules of highly efficient German learning. I hope that these tips will help you getting started. There is much more to the German language and learning it but this will cover quite a lot of your path to your aim of proficiency. And if you are thinking about taking your German learning to the next level, you might want to take a look at my video courses and ebooks here (or just click on the dandelion = Pusteblume below)

Dear German learner, I absolutely understand your desire to find a tutor using English to learn German more efficiently. In using a language that you already understand well your tutor is able to explain things way more clearly to you than if she taught you solely in German. That is the most reasonable and efficient approach. Just because it is usually done otherwise doesn’t mean that it is the best method. I also share the Berlitz experience a user has mentioned. You will not easily find a school offering such services in form of groups. I have seen one a while ago, that took it lightly with using English in the classroom, but can not find it anymore. The best is to go for a private tutor which you can find for anything between 20€ and 80€ per lesson (i.e. 45mins). Find one that uses common sense and uses English as instructional language.

Here is why your request is reasonable and why you won’t find it in (many) language schools:

SMART

You UNDERSTAND quickly and can make immediate USE of it. Like this you have more time to practice CORRECT German instead of guessing around or at the least feel uncertain about it.

Grammar is a quite complex matter. Explaining something complex in a language that is not well understood is just unreasonable and creates frustration and uncertainty.

If the teacher can not explain things properly as she doesn’t have the tools (English language), she has to work with many examples. Next to being a waste of time, you are the one doing all the figuring out. Why would you pay for that? Isn’t that why we hire experts to explain things clearly and faultlessly?

The direct approach as this kind of teaching is called has not been proven scientifically i.e. measurably to be any more efficient than any other approach.

The concept is from the sixties and has widely been misunderstood. Just because one has to listen a lot to German, that doesn’t mean that everything has to be taught! in German.

We do not learn languages like children. We learn them also much faster. Considering that a learner learns best when she’s exposed to a language like when she was a child is jus bad didactics.

NOT IN SCHOOLS BECAUSE

Language schools in Germany need many students to run economically. It often so happens that there are students that are not able to understand English (or any other common language) so that the teacher has to refer to a language that everybody understands to the same degree. Ironically it is the language everybody doesn’t understand to the same degree: German.

Usually language schools have a high fluctuation of language teachers. Those have to be replaceable to run a school economically. As not all German teachers speak good English, this widens the range of available staff members for the school to chose from.

If a school teaches the monolingual way although the group is homogenous, i.e. e.g. speaking a common language, then they haven’t done their research and still believe those behaviorists from the sixties.

These points are not just my opinion. These are the results and the conclusions of years of experience and scientific and practical research. If you claim that teaching German solely in German is more beneficial for any learner and not just the tutor / school, prove that it is or tag it as your assumption. A good entry read not only for tutors is Butzkamm.

SOME THOUGHTS FROM A TEACHERS POINT OF VIEW

The following is my reaction to a discussion on toytown that you can find here (click). I simply couldn’t sit still any longer reading that that school is better than that one because it is cheaper or whatever reason they have found. In general a language school is a language school and group courses are all suffering from the same systemic flaws that I will describe below. Feel free to disagree and to bring up solid arguments for your point in case you indeed want to disagree ^^.

Viel Spaß beim Lesen.

HERE WE GO

I once again would like to mention that a German private tutor is the best option if you are serious about learning proper German (Find out about our German private lessons in Berlin).

Let’s do some math: A cheap course costs 200€ per month (e.g. Hartnack-Schule) plus some books and the exam fee later on. To reach fluency which more or less starts after your B2 exam (exactly the moment that you hold your certificate) you would need 9 months if you keep up with the speed in class. That makes 1.800€ plus sth sth for the books and the exam fee, so let’s say 2.000€.

HOW TO MEASURE THE QUALITY OF A COURSE

I have it from one of the directors of a big school here in Berlin that around 60-70% pass the B1 exam, and I suppose that that is also the quota for the B2 exam if not even lower. You should ask the schools you are thinking of about their success rate regarding the exams you are about to take (if so). Of course there are many self-inflicted reasons why learners do not pass the exam but it might also hint to the quality of the instruction.

LESS IS MORE

I often read here (and elsewhere) that getting many lessons for little money is a good thing. It is not. At least not in a fixed structure that is predominant on the market today. If you learn a language you want that to happen quickly. While 100 hours might bring you farther than 50 hours, if you can’t advance on your own speed, you will have simply paid 50 hours for sitting and waiting to advance to the next level. Only a few schools will (be able to) let you jump to a higher class before time and also then you will miss some of the important stuff as the courses are not tailored to your individual needs. So what you are getting cheaper is more of the same. But in language learning what you need is more new stuff to advance quickly. If you purchase 600 hrs of classes running with 50% efficiency what you get is 300 hrs of real value while losing ! 300hrs of your precious time. But it might not even 50% that you will get out of a group as I will point out below.

WHY CLASSES ARE A WASTE OF PRECIOUS TIME AND PROVIDE LOW QUALITY

Now, sitting in class with 10 or even 20 people is a waste of time for ~66% of the participants. The teacher will try to find a moderate speed to keep that group together for as long as it lasts. That means, should you be a slow learner, you’d be still running behind, should you be a fast learner you most likely will get bored. And even if the class runs at exactly at your individual speed, you might be slowed down by the slowies or simply be annoyed by the fasties that might decide to simply distract the rest of the class to get at least some attention.

THE PRONUNCIATION PROBLEM

But let’s assume the class is amazingly disciplined and running at optimum speed. You will be listening to very little original German as teachers are instructed to let students interact. That’s the so called communicative approach. That means that you will often talk to non-native speakers that naturally make a lot of mistakes and also will not be able to correct yours. The teacher will not be able to properly keep an ear on your efforts and miss out on correcting you a lot. Listening to how a teacher corrects other people’s mistakes is not the same and most likely will do very little for your pronunciation. And once you have fossilized a mistake it is a pain in the neck to get it out of the system.

GERMAN ONLY

Then all schools at least in Berlin or even Germany have to instruct you in German only. That is an amazing challenge for many learners. In an 1 on 1 session thatmight work with a little help from our friend the English language here and there but with 10 people that will just frustrate you. Sure, you will in the end figure sth out on your own, but why paying a teacher then if she doesn’t do her job by explaining things fast and clearly to you so that you don’t have to figure things out on your own and take the risk of misunderstanding things. The schools have to work like this for economical and organizational reasons but they often at times also claim to do so because they believe in a myth that speaking solely in the target language will speed up the learning process. Obviously that is far from the truth. I instruct in English and practice in German and have managed to teach students in a lot less time than 6 months.

DISCLAIMER

I am not advertising my services here. Take any private tutor you want. Those are available for as little at 14€ per hour on italki.com. I just can’t watch those who are serious about learning German wasting their time and in the end money by sitting in overcrowded classes (three makes a crowd). I have taught huge classes for way too many years and will never ever teach a group again as it is simply more frustrating than necessary for all involved.

THE GOALS ARE INDEPENDENCE AND KNOWING HOW TO LEARN

They also never really teach you HOW to learn instead they are simply showing you “only” WHAT to learn. Learning German is a highly complex matter that most learners need thorough guidance to learn efficiently and effectively. Most private tutors won’t do that either though. That’s why you might want to search the net for “learning how to learn (a language)” or similar. There is a free course on Coursera.com about that topic, though not focussing on language: Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects by Dr. Barbara Oakley, Dr. Terrence Sejnowski as a starter. Search for “linkword technique” and work with memrise.com to make the most out of your learning time.

THE REAL COSTS OF A GERMAN PRIVATE TUTOR AND GROUP COMPARED

So, let’s assume you find a German private tutor for 20€/hour (60mins not 45mins like they sell you in school to make the number of lessons seem higher). For 2.000€ you’d get 100 lessons with that tutor. If you had one hour a day, which is more than sufficient as your attention span sinks after 45mins and you will also have to do some homework or real work, that money would last 5 months!!! not counting in the weekends, give her some rest.

But as the instruction is way more efficient and if she’s good (!), she will also provide you with a lot (!) of homework so you will advance much faster than that. And by the way, you’ll know when a teacher is good. You will feel ! it right away. Even if a tutor costs you 40€/hour -which by the way is a more than fair price as a private tutor usually pays around 500€ monthly insurances alone before taxes) you could simply see that tutor 3x per week and still have 4 months of highly efficient and above all individual instruction which is more than enough if you do your homework (i might have mentioned that before).

PRIVATE TUTORS ARE TIMELORDS (AND LADIES)

So next to not spending a single cent more than with a group course, you would also save time. Imagine what you could do with one month of extra lifetime?

Feel free to disagree. These are just the results of 15 years of teaching German in schools and also of having sat in over 20 language courses due to my studies and also out of pure interest). Compare it to your own experience and come to your own conclusions.

LAST DISCLAIMER

I am not criticising language schools for doing what they have to do to survive. And some of them do the hell of a job to deliver good services to their clients, I have heard good from GLS and Tandem e.V. Berlin I know personally. The Goethe is just amazingly overpriced, though if you go there the money goes back to the government (currently they make 111 Mio EUR annually with the language courses worldwide alone) and might reduce my tax load. But they also offer many other amazing cultural events and also a soothing atmosphere that might make up for some of it. But…

IF YOU INSIST ON TAKING CLASSES IN A GROUP

think of the people you would like to work with. The Goethe will bring you in touch with another clientel than the VHS or a school like Hartnack e.g. If you are a fast learner seek schools that offer small ! groups (less than 8 people) but that will make courses significantly more expensive. Count in the time you need to get to that school. Can you make use of the time otherwise lost traveling? The free Memrise-app is a great travel companion. Ask for the success rates of the ones taking the exam and if that number seems awfully low to you ask them why this is so. If they stagger around then they haven’t done their homework and I would be a bit more skeptical.

TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

Then before signing anything, ask for a free trial lesson. If it is a big school I would even ask if you could try two different teachers as the quality of your experience mainly depends on your view of the competency of that person. They might not want you to do that with the reason that you might disturb the class e.g. but one session should be for free in any case. If they do not accept that, get out of there. This is not the way to conduct an ethical business. I do not spend 200€ or even more on something that I can’t see or that I can’t return. Even though at times a half year package might save you 100€ I wouldn’t sign that before I have thoroughly tested out that teacher at least for a month.

ALWAYS ASK

If you have already sold your soul and your house to the school and feel not content with the tutor or just feel like you are not advancing as quickly as you hoped for, seek an honest talk with the teacher to give you feedback on your performance and ask for suggestions on how to improve that. Or simply go to the office and ask to change classes. That of course will only work in the bigger schools and schools will be usually hesitant to let you migrate because it messes up their planning. They often try to fill every class to the maximum and are willing to make compromises regarding the homogeneity of the language level of the group which is not to your advantage.

FINAL WORDS

Again, don’t take anything I say for granted. I hope you see the logic in most of what I said but when it comes to my experience, check whether I am correct with my claims or not. Either way I genuinely wish you success with your German learning and may you enjoy the beauty of that fabulous language of mine 😉